Best DVD Burning Software for PVR 250 MPEG2 files to DVD

[MVBJJ]

After extensive research I went out and purchased a PVR 250. I have successfully encoded TV broadcasts to HDD, however I am now having trouble burning to DVD. This is how I plan on getting the media to my primary TV. I have a new Sony Vaio and the Click to DVD software continually crashes while trying to burn to DVD. Can someone recommend a good DVD burning software that will work well with PVR 250 encoded MPEG files? Is there a way I can easily stream the captured MPEG files to my RPTV to eliminate the step of burning to DVD?

[Cayars]

Before spending more money, try the ULEAD DVD Movie Factory program that came with the PVR-250. Check the Hauppauge website for updates (I think there is an update).

This has worked for me in the past.

Carlo

[MVBJJ]

Thanks Carlo. I am still new at this and trying to understand the various video encoding formats. I did try ULEAD DVD Movie Factory and it wanted to re-encode my MPEG file to a DVD compatible format. I don't understand why. Using the PVR WINTV software I chose the highest quality level to encode my file (MPEG2 12 VBR). That worked fine and I can even play back through the WINTV player. But I need to get the file to DVD in order to play on my RPTV. Why does ULEAD need to convert this to another format? Am I restricted to DVD Standard, DVD Long, and DVD extra (?) long play formats only if I want to burn to DVD? It was my understanding that ANY MPEG2 format will burn to DVD and subsequently play. Thus, I would like to experiment with many of the available encoding formats to find the one that works best for me. What am I missing?

[Baylo]

OK, I just typed out a long answer to this, hit the wrong key and lost it . Here are the main points...

Creating a DVD is not just a case of copying an MPEG2 file onto a DVD. The disk needs to be 'authored'. This means creating the required directory structure on disk (AUDIO_TS which is unused for DVD video, and VIDEO_TS which is where your files will go), splitting the video files into 1GB chunks, and adding other files (eg *.ifo files) that tell the DVD player about menus, alternate soundtracks, and how to play the video files on the disk, etc.

Now, creating a DVD also requires a couple of other things. First - your files need to fit onto a 4.7GB disk. Recording at 12mbps (which is what I assume you mean by MPEG2 12 VBR) will very quickly create a very large file. In fact, one hour of this will be too large to fit on a DVD. Therefore, the software needs to recompress the file to physically fit. You shouldn't worry too much about this - with a good codec you can get very good quality at low bitrates. An alternative would be to record at a low enough bit rate that no recompression is required - the file already fits. Having said that, some software will 'force' a recompression anyway. I know Vegas+DVD does not, I don't know about DVD Movie Factory. Either way, set BTV to record at a resolution of 720*480 (DVD spec) and that will help preserve quality - I think BTV's defaults are 640*480.

In addition, although you can happily create high bitrate recordings in BTV, the DVD spec sets a max bit rate of about 9mbps (and some DVD players don't even do that well). So you need to recompress to something less than 9mbps anyway just to be compliant. I use Vegas to recompress to a VBR of 5mbps with a minimum of 192kbps and a max of 8mbps. This gets about 2 hours on a DVD and looks very good.

Hopefully that helps a little.

Mark

[SHS]

MVBJJ if look on shspvr.com under "How to Use" under "VCD / SVCD / CVD / DVD Authoring"
Home DVD Player MAX Compatibility is only 9800 kbit/s

[MVBJJ]

Thanks for the advice. I will give it another shot tonight following these guidelines.